How League of Legends Voice Chat Could Transform Solo Queue

League of Legends is finally getting team voice chat implemented into the game. The feature briefly appeared in the code on the PBE test server, and Riot Games later confirmed that it is currently in development, though “it's not going to go live imminently”, Andrei “Meddler” van Roon, senior vice president at Riot Games, said on Reddit this Monday, March 2

Voice chat could significantly impact solo queue, changing how players coordinate and bringing the ranked experience closer to what professional play looks like. However, there is also a risk that voice chat could be used for toxicity and harassment against other players, which could negatively impact the game. In League, communication is mostly done through pings and text chat, with third-party tools like Discord being used for its Voice Chat.

Of course, League has its own Voice Chat system, but it only allows for premades to join — non-premades have to join on third-party tools. This limits the communication in Solo Queue to purely pings and text chat, which is not only less efficient, but also carries the possibility of being misunderstood and ending up in a bad play, which then impacts the outcome of the game.

Voice Chat being added to League would increase the macro level on the entire ladder, but especially at high-elo. With clearer communication and coordinated teamwork, calls will be much more important than they are now. Macro decisions as objective planning around Barons, Dragons, Heralds, and grubs, will become easier to execute with Voice Chat being added.

Roles such as jungle and support will become way more important, and being able to track the enemy support and jungler to call out incoming roams and ganks will be easier to communicate to your teammates, making the ability to do this more important to understand in solo queue. All of these will bring the normal League of Legends experience closer to what we see in pro play.

At the top ranks, Solo Queue will become what the Champions queue was, since pro players had access to Voice Chat through Discord, but with more high-elo streamers and players. This could bring in a new wave of content, as well as letting players watch and improve their own macro game and knowledge.

However, Voice Chat does bring a concern: toxicity. It can go both ways. On one side, Voice Chat could massively reduce text flaming and spam pinging, as being able to voice your ideas will be less frustrating than being limited to pings and chat only. A lot of players already play without chat, a lot of callouts are “lost in translation” from idea to pings. Voice would reduce overall confusion and possibly bring the level of toxicity down.

However, on the other side, people may use Voice Chat to discriminate on first hearing who is speaking, which has been a concern being discussed a lot on X, especially for women. Riot would need good systems to punish Voice Chat abuse while also having a system that doesn't misunderstand certain callouts, languages, or accents. It's a challenge, but a challenge Riot has already faced with VALORANT and is developing and working on a system like that currently.

Voice Chat will be a net positive change for Solo Queue and will make the ladder more competitive. While it's still in development and no release date has been confirmed, players from all ranks should be looking forward to the implementation of Voice Chat, as it’s a standard in all modern competitive games. This would be one of the biggest updates for League of Legends and most likely a turning point in the game's life.